The objectives of this project are (1) to work out a model of verbal and non-verbal communication for public negotiation sessions and public meetings which accounts for misunderstanding due to differences in cultural or ethnic background; (2) devise empirical method for isolating differences in language usage rules or communication style that cause these problems; (3) on the assumption that the differences in question are subconscious, to experiment with ways of making their effect on the interpretation of meaning explicit and alerting participants to the possibilities of misunderstanding; (4) lay the foundations for a training program for anthropological specialists in cross-cultural communication, who can serve as consultants to public agencies and to professional negotiators. Data will consist of video and audio taped sessions. These will be analyzed by sociolinguistic methods of conversational analysis. Findings will be used to construct clear video taped test cases of misunderstanding. These will be submitted to ethnically stratified panels of judges who will choose among alternative explanations to test predictions regarding the effect of cultural background on interpretation of meaning. These same test tapes can then be used for instructional purposes.